


One

by Medie



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-13
Updated: 2011-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when a Vulcan pronounces you a disaster with the opposite sex, you know you're screwed</p>
            </blockquote>





	One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boosette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boosette/gifts).



One thing's for sure, he has a type. Tall, commanding, and totally, completely out of his league. Chris has never been all that shy about his inadequacies in the romance department. Any relationship successes he manages these days are entirely due to Colt and her meticulous attention to 'not letting the captain fuck things up' be they Starfleet or personal.

(She'll end up Commander in Chief some day. It's Chris's opinion that anyone capable of miracles on that order gets whatever job they want. He'll write the damn recommendation himself.)

Before Colt, however, he'd been on his own and, yes, it's a long-since established fact that Christopher Pike and women just do not mix. Particularly Christopher Pike and women he happens to be interested in. Really, he's very bad with girls. There have been official declarations on the matter - and, yes, when a Vulcan pronounces you a disaster with the opposite sex, you know you're screwed, thank you so very much Captain Sveda - and everything.

He should have seen it coming, really. When your first love is a Deltan ambassador who'd pressed a kiss to your cheek before offering an indulgent smile and departing surrounded by starry-eyed Starfleet escorts, what chance do you have?

Miraiel had been exploring Earth, commissioned to do so by the Deltan government, as part of the Federation's earnest, slightly dogged efforts to court the famed navigators into their ranks. Her curiosity had led to a wish to visit Earth's desert regions, as much eager to experience the starkness of their beauty as to see the results of humanity's earliest attempts at terraforming.

That she'd ended up with a small, tow-headed human boy as her perpetual shadow hadn't been a surprise to anyone save said little boy. He'd proposed, she'd laughed, kissed his cheek and promised should Delta ever permit such unions (it would be years before Chris could understand the sheer physical impossibilities involved in a Deltan/Human relationship, pleasure thresholds and all) she would be honored.

Part of him's still waiting, even if other, more accessible, but equally unattainable women have come and gone in her stead.

His parents had laughed with the same indulgence and soothed his broken heart with the lure of Starfleet and its promise of the stars. He'd grown up with that promise, let it distract him from boyish heartaches and lead him toward another such woman.

He's a cadet, fresh-faced and eager, loaded down with a dissertation that's threatening to choke every word when he meets her.

Captain Archer's his first commanding officer. The daughter of two legends, and a legend in the making in her own right, she's one of the handful of captains to select the best of the best from Chris's graduating class.

The last few weeks of the session, he sees her jogging on one of the Academy tracks. He doesn't stand a chance. Particularly not when, one morning, she waves for him to join her. They don't talk, they just run, but Chris falls in love just the same. Like Miraiel years before, he follows the captain around like a puppy, almost through the entire mission. She's cool, relaxed, apparently at ease with the scrutiny her last name garners her and Chris adores her.

Awkward, fumbling every word out of his mouth, he never quite manages to tell her the truth. Never tries, if he's honest. She's a captain, he's a green rookie, there's not a chance in hell.

But when she looks at him, fingers laced together, with a knowing smile and says, "You'll go far in this business, Pike," he soars, if only to crash just a little when she adds, laughing, "Just as soon as you learn to look people in the eye."

He pulls the coveted position of second officer on the Intrepid, the only human on a wholly Vulcan crew, under the aforementioned Captain Sveda after that. She's warm, for a Vulcan, and he doesn't fall in love - much - but he does definitely fall into hero worship.

She's young, for a Vulcan, with light brown hair and a tall, reed-thin build. She looks like someone born to a desert planet, with features that are just a little lined, rough from the hot desert winds, and he's not surprised to find out she'd lived in one of the outlying settlements, the ones where most, not just a few, of the buildings found their construction dates back to pre-Reformation days.

He idolizes her and her scant bits of praise, chasing them like the latinum some aliens prize, watching everything and anything she does. He's not a cadet, he's left those days behind him, but there's something about the way she works that brings that fresh-faced kid out in him.

It's not so much a love of her as a love of the way of her. She spends hours and hours among her crew, bent over sensor data that should be as boring as so much space dust, pouring through it with intensity usually reserved for supernovas.

"Pay attention, Christopher," she murmurs, tapping his monitor with a slender finger. She plays the Vulcan lyre, he's heard her, and he can see the callouses such playing has left her. "It is tedious work, but this is where mistakes will be made. The momentous is oft hidden within the tedious. The fates of thousands, even millions, resting on what appears to be the background noise of a binary star."

It'll be years before he truly, _truly_ comprehends the meaning of her words, but he loves her for them anyway.

There others, many and varied, Janeese with her curves and her promises of joining him in the stars, Elizabeth of the cool blue eyes and almost Vulcan composure, and Aurelan, a solemn-eyed Betazoid who falls in love with George Kirk's oldest boy without ever realizing just how much Chris had adored her, but through it all, there's one.

The only One.

Number One is the culmination of everything and, just as soon as he realizes it, Chris also realizes that he is so very doomed. It's merciful, then, that Number One is both so very astute and so very easily manipulated.

It should worry him that Colt can so quickly incite his senior staff to mutiny - Boyce and Barry _will_ be hearing about that at his earliest opportunity - but with Number One's bare foot sliding down his leg, Chris finds he can't worry about much of anything at all. Sure, they tricked him into a relationship with his executive officer and he should be furious, but the fact of the matter is, he's not. He's kind of embarrassingly grateful, actually.

Lord knows, he'd never be here otherwise. His record on the matter testifies to that one loud and clear.

"Stop that," Number One murmurs, her foot making a slow circle of his ankle bone.

"Stop what?" he asks, nuzzling the perfect line of her throat.

"Your compulsive over-analysis of our current situation," One says, leaning into him. "It's distracting. Which, given the situation we are in, is not conducive to an appropriate conclusion."

"You're laughing at me," he complains, pressing his face into the crook of her neck. She smells like that soap he'd bought her on the Vega colony. He loves the scent of it, but cringes at the memory of Boyce's reaction.

" _Soap, Chris_?" he'd asked, skeptical. " _Won't she think you're implying something_?"

He hadn't thought of that, but if Number One had, she's never let on. Number One's always been quite talented in properly interpreting his clusterfuck attempts at romance. Or, really, attempts at actual, meaningful communication in general. He's never been good at that either.

He sucks a playful mark into her shoulder. He is good at this though. Even if, yes, she is laughing at him. "I am not," she says, her hand resting lightly on his thigh. "I am considering the truth of your comment." Her shoulders move, just a little, and he knows, without looking, that her lips are curved up into an amused smile.

"That truth being that I'm a disaster at this and, were it not for my yeoman, would have bungled this horribly by now?"

"Yes, that," One agrees. She tips her head back, looking up at him. "The crew thinks she's in love with you."

"She might've been, once, but so were they all at some point," he says. "It's practically a Starfleet tradition." He pulls her on top of him, loving the way her body curves over his as she leans in to listen. "Weren't you?" He knows her first captain was Archer, just as his was, that One had pursued the assignment with all the devotion that she displays to every aspect of her life that matters to her.

Her dark hair falls forward around them and, for a moment, he pictures how they'd look together. Admiral Archer, as she is now, pressed tight against Number One's slim form, each woman difficult to identify in a lover's embrace. If his body reacts to the idea with an enthusiasm that has One's eyebrows raising, well, she doesn't make any verbal comment on the matter.

Colt's machinations only go so far. She can't help him here. Not when his body's being, well, _his_.

Number One slides fingers along his side, making him jump, and her smile turns sly. "I believe the appropriate response would be - wouldn't you like to know?"

He chokes.

Whether it's from her finger striking a ticklish spot or his own shock, well, Chris chooses the option less likely to humiliate him terribly.

Not that it matters, Number One knows the truth anyway. He's always been bad at this, but fortunately, she's always been better.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Nobody Else Will Do (the Thrilling Combination Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/389239) by [circ_bamboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo)




End file.
